Bumping an old thread... but should be useful for those venturing into computer audio.
For starters, I'm a Foobar guy, 200% in fact and I'm also Mr. Convenience over Mr. Perfect... meaning I've everything connected to the PC and PS3 and will simply use a sounddock or Bose instead of the AVR and speakers and everything runs on a wireless network and via tablets and phablets and via Bluetooth and WiFi.
I've tinkered with pretty much every media player and have stuck with Foobar for years and I'm also of the firm belief that pretty much any player can be tweaked and set up to sound the exact way you want... for most 99% difference will be achieved by using EQ on rock setting, but many tweaks like a RAM disc, WASAPI, audiophile mode, etc. will make a huge difference.
I've used JRiver on and off but never as the default player for anything... its always been Foobar for audio and Daum PotPlayer for video.
The past 2 days I've been setting up a new media server for both audio and video (and probably the reason I'm tired and having the beginning of a headache) but on the new setup I installed Foobar and JRiver... and maybe its the headache but Foobar, while it sounds great also is harsher and not helping with the headache. JRiver on the other hand is smooth, buttery smooth, pretty much rolls off the harshness and slightly emphasizes the bass... in other words no listening fatigue. Not sure what processing they are doing, I'm using the latest version and it definitely has impressed me big time.
Now a question for the JRiver users... is there an auto DJ feature in JRiver, a function that will keep adding tracks to the playlist, and keep it running. This is a feature found in both MediaMonkey and MusicBee and is a great way to listen to music you've not heard in a long time or for simple background playing when you are focussed on other tasks.
Edit - Found the solution for Auto DJ, Play Doctor, works on both the PC and the smartphone app.
Anyways, to get back to the point... give JRiver a try, might just float your boat, its easy on the ears and pretty much works with minimal tweaking. The sound has a smoothness not found so easily in other players, hard to describe it, but a better way to put it is less listening fatigue even over extended periods of time.
